No, but it may be a signal for help,
and not necessarily in a bad way.

God is a construction of peoples’
need to have an organizing influence in their lives, standards to live
by, and some reason to carry on. In all of those ways, God and
everything that comes with it – the afterlife, sense of well being and
spiritual comfort, and purpose in all things – is truly helpful to
people, as various studies have seemed to indicate. Belief is powerful,
almost regardless of its details.

That God, and the belief therein, is
a signal for help is endemic to the genesis of the subject, if you will
pardon the pun.Read Post -
Comment

Three of the front
runners for the Republican nomination are now just memories, pundit
fodder: Huckabee and Trump, and Palin recedes into political tinnitus.
But the retiring of all three has one thing in common, and it’s money.
Huckabee just bought a huge house in Florida and is enjoying his status
and salary at Fox News. Trump is more at home on his reality show. And
Palin is enjoying both Fox money and reality TV and will probably be the
next Oprah Winfrey, although she’ll never get more than twenty percent
of the viewers because only that percentage of Americans can identify
with her spunky pride in her ignorance. And yes, she’s pretty.

I am a rock
star. Ok, ok, I am in a band with a rock star. I am also a
husband, father of three daughters, and a small business owner who pays
his taxes like anyone else. I never got into politics until the last
election and wrote and produced a non-partisan PSA video for Comcast
called “Get Out and Vote” to help assuage voter apathy throughout this
ailing nation. I didn’t vote for either one of the major candidates in
2008. I am all about trying to rally everyone to start voting again so
we can possibly support a third political party that makes sense. If we
can educate and get people out to the polls again, I believe that there
could be a groundswell of voters who could turn the tides in future
elections.
We need a party “by the people and for the people”. As corny as that
sounds, it is a precept that our nation was founded upon and if we are
to lift up and resuscitate this
suffocating political system, we are going to need a leader who actually
leads rather than folds like a cheap stroller just to please his
parties’ special interests.

The RCJ Posts Issues
Questionnaire on Obama - Obama 2012 – Where Do You
Stand?

Rick Alan Rice - Publisher of RARWRITER.com and the
Revolution Culture Journal. He is also proprietor of A&E/IT Consulting
firm Rick A Rice Consulting.

The Revolution
Culture Journal (RCJ) invites you to participate in a little experiment
to help us understand public perception of President Barack Obama,
particularly as it relates to enthusiasm for his re-election in 2012.

We have identified
34 issues in U.S. foreign and domestic policy and devised a scale to
determine how well respondents feel President Obama is doing with each.
Use this link to go to the questionnaire.

Rick Alan Rice - Publisher of RARWRITER.com and the
Revolution Culture Journal. He is also proprietor of A&E/IT Consulting
firm Rick A Rice Consulting.

Somehow the idea of
using nuclear fission, and eventually nuclear fusion, to boil water,
produce steam, drive turbines and produce direct current electricity has
found its way back into the list of acceptable alternatives as an
environmentally friendly solution. This bit of Houdini depends entirely
on comparison to power generation through the burning of coal, which
produces carbon emissions and is a primary contributor to rising levels
of greenhouse gas (GHG) in our choking environment.

Rick Alan Rice - Publisher of RARWRITER.com and the
Revolution Culture Journal. He is also proprietor of A&E/IT Consulting
firm Rick A Rice Consulting.

In my career as a
consultant, I have all kinds of opportunities to interact with different
personality types at different levels of organizations. Some of these
are of the kind that might make others feel that life is not worth
living, but the advantage of consultancy is that my involvements are
focused, short, and generally sweet, and then I leave the office dramas
behind for a quick dip into the next kiln of opportunity. I am like a
merry mercenary in that way, unexposed to the daily grind of the
organizations with which I work.

Staff people, on
the other hand, are subject to hierarchical structures and personality
profiles, and their critical path issue is: a) whether or not to stay in
the roles they are in, given the odds of rising up to a more satisfying
position within the organization; or b) to cast their fates to wind,
which is the job market.

While the rich
are enjoying tax breaks they have no need for and U.S. corporations are
holding on to record profits, padding their accounts to ensure that this
is not their rainy day, but doing little to further the
employment and domestic security needs of United States citizens, word
comes that we are running out of money to provide help for a growingpopulation of homeless (see the Huffington
Post on this date).Read Post -
Comment

I was all set
to thank the progressive Arab world, or at least the 25 percent of it
that is situated in Egypt, for taking charge of U.S. foreign policy and
forcing it to make sense. Then those pro-Mubarak thugs showed up and
shocked the global community back to reality.Read Post -
Comment

___________

Why Your College Student Can't
Read, Write or Even Think

Rick Alan Rice - Publisher, Writer, A&E / IT
Consultant

Back a hundred
years ago, when I was in college, all the guys who were doing the best
in the classes I took all seemed to be Viet Nam veterans going to school
on government grants. They tended to stand out because they were older
and far more experienced than their classmates. It seems unlikely that
they were brighter, but they were fundamentally different in terms of
focus and perspective in ways that seemed obviously helpful to them.Read Post - Comment

Watching
the turnout for the public meetings being held by elected officials to discuss
the health care initiative, one can’t help but be struck by the plurality of
right-wing dufus types (see the NPR picture at right) and senior citizens at
these “rallies”. Is anyone else showing up? These gatherings appear to be
septuagenarian support groups for aging aunts and uncles chaperoned by NRA card
holders. And, of course, grandma and grandpa are there, if only in spirit,
having gotten the word that supporters of “the public option” want them all to
just die.

Some of us may also be struck by the
disproportionate representation of Republicans at these public meetings.
Conservative Republicanism and old age go together, an observation supported
recently by metrics showing that the core audience for Rush Limbaugh’s radio
show and the Fox News Channel is 67 years of age. Perhaps it should be no
surprise, as these "dinosaurs" approach the edges of their personal tar pits,
that they are susceptible to the fear mongering that is the standard fare of
right wing demagoguery.

The thing that really hits me
though, watching these televised debacles, is the abundance of irony represented
by the resistance of seniors who don’t trust the government to run health care,
though in so many ways so many of them owe their very lives to the government
they apparently now disdain.

This, after all, is in part Tom
Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation”, the people who saved the world from Adolph
Hitler. These are the people, we are told, who sacrificed unselfishly so that we
could have the America we know today.

But then that is part of the
problem, isn’t it?

The America of today is a nation in
decline following a successful decades-long campaign by right-wing economists
and influential business leaders to remove government oversight from all aspects
of our lives (through deregulation, including actions like the dismantling of
the Glass-Steagall Act). This, not surprisingly, was accompanied by an
overwhelming revolution in consumerism that washed the decks of public
responsibility and gave the thumbs up to conspicuous consumption, even among the
lower income groups (see Walmart).

The result is that progressive
policy makers, and fewer and fewer even exist, are now confronted by the
conservative wrath in force at the health care meetings today, which come in the
form of a most confounding beast, a two-headed creature:

One, the senior population, that
survived the inappropriately named "Great Depression" and then prospered
largely due to progressive public policy (and world war) and now fear that
the benefits they accrued will be taken from them, and

Two, the Baby Boomers who were nurtured at the teat of the
aforementioned "Greatest Generation" and supplied with easy credit on which
to build their "me empires" and now fear a reduction in their capacity for
prospering under the weight of imposed public responsibility

THE GREATEST GENERATION:
The generation that birthed the Baby Boomers was a humble and grateful lot, the
original "Grateful Dead" in so many ways. Without the benefit of broad media and
under the influence of monopolized political communications (like the Hearst
publications syndicate), they appreciated the Works Projects Administration
opportunities of the 1930s and they showed up ready to go when Uncle Sam told
them they were needed for service to country abroad in World War II. Through
their blood, sweat and tears, to borrow a cliché, they made history by turning
back hostile international adversaries fore and aft and bringing about an
industrial revolution here at home. It followed that they were molded into a
generation that placed the greatest emphasis on shared sacrifice and compliance
to social norms.

Here, as it happened, was the open
wound that allowed the infection of "unenlightened politics" to establish itself
and fester. Returning from the war abroad, Americans melded comfortably into the
new "age of tomorrow", with its creature comforts and vast and ready resources.
The GI Bill helped a generation of veterans gain educations that had previously
been unimaginable for the working class, and it also allowed them to buy starter
homes at low prices and at low interest rates, often for no money down. The
accumulation of societal wealth that followed was “the American Century” made
personal. And then it got better. Medicare took some basic health care burdens
from the shoulders of people 65 and older, providing a guaranteed level of
service to meet the needs of seniors who are by far the greatest users of health
care. The Greatest Generation “sold out”, to use the jargon of their children’s
generation; “sold their souls to the devil”. That was the smart bet, the
expectation, the norm, and if you could fit in through employment with some
mega-corporation, all the more impressive. The thing is, over time those norms
and living denials became more and more corrosive to justice until corruption
swelled throughout the U.S. economy and the U.S. way of doing business became
more and more predatory. In the course of gathering our shells and protecting
our gains, we ignored the ramifications of what was being created.

THE ME GENERATION:
The generation that I belong
to, the Baby Boomers, the "Me Generation", was always disconnected from
government and at ironic odds with our parent's generation. This is part of what
makes the current health care debate so convoluted, with its polarized parties
and its convergence of seniors and right-leaning Baby Boomers.

My generation is one that has not
developed much of a relationship with public or moral responsibility. The
greatest societal events of our lives have largely been repugnantly negative,
from the political assassinations of the '60s and the Viet Nam War, with its
conscriptions and high body counts, through the corruptions in the Executive
Branch of government associated with Watergate, through the dismally
pain-indexed Carter Administration, and right on into the "greed is good"
excesses of the Reagan years and beyond.

The steadily dissolving standards of
American decency, and the watering down of American democracy through such
things as media conglomeration, have rewarded the aggressively amoral among us
until finally the U.S. has come to feel like a cage match, where the worst thugs
prevail. The big winners are Ed Zander of Motorola, Franklin Raines of Fannie
Mae, Gary Pruitt of McClatchy Co., Gerry Levin of Time Warner, Chuck Prince of
CitiGroup, Bob Nardelli of Home Depot and Chrysler, Stan O'Neal of Merrill
Lynch, Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers, Kerry Kellinger of Washington Mutual, Rick
Wagoner of General Motors, Gary Forsee of Sprint Nextel Corporation, Ken Lay of
Enron, Bernie Ebbers of Worldcom, Richard Scrushy of HealthSouth, Angelo Mozilo
of Countrywide Financial, Al Dunlap of Sunbeam Corp, Jimmy Cayne of Bear
Stearns, John Sculley of Apple, Martin Sullivan of AIG, Larry Ellison of Oracle,
John Chambers of Cisco Systems, and of course the redoubtable Donald Trump, Rush
Limbaugh, and Howard Stern, all figureheads of importantly errant money
machines.

Down at the street level, all of
that mendacity translates into an ethos that says "there is where I want to be
so get the hell out of my way", because why not? The alternative is compliance
with the new social norm, which is slavery to revolving credit and the financing
of unredeemable debt. There is a better alternative, all one needs to do is keep
the government out of one's pocket.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL DRAWBRIDGE:
The "Get Out of Jail Free" pass for both of these polar opposites is the same,
which is their avowed allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, a document that
doubtless few have read. We Americans are an odd lot in that way. The other
document that holds us safe from any point of view that might vary from our own
is the Holy Bible, specifically the New Testament.

The point of view argued by many of
those who don't wish for health care to become a universal right in the U.S. is
that it is not provided for in the Constitution or any of its Amendments. That,
of course, is open to interpretation as the documents we choose to cite usually
are. The Preamble to the Constitution states specifically that the idea of the
thing was "...to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic
tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity...", which I
think could be argued as grounds for almost anything, depending upon
one's definitions of perfect union, justice, domestic tranquility, common
defense, general welfare, blessed liberties and posterity.

One could, for instance, translate
the pro health care position into this statement:

"So that I may feel more
comfortable hanging out with my fellow Americans, I am going to provide just
access to health care services as a matter of maintaining the quality of
life in our neighborhoods, ensuring against civil unrest related to
inadequate service delivery and establishing commitment to community as a
standard to which future generations must be measured."

Or, one could use the same Preamble
text to argue against universal health care, or gun control, or anything else
that makes sense. To wit:

"So that I may feel more
comfortable hanging out with fellow Americans who have earned our right to
domestic tranquility and a perfect union, which excludes the right of any
party to intrude upon my privilege of liberty, I am committed to seeing that
justice is done to those who threaten our way of life, to providing a common
defense against all adversaries, and to protecting our general welfare for
the purpose of ensuring our continued existence."

It really just comes down to a
matter of how mean you wish to be in the exploitation of our "sacred text". And
by the way, the Constitution was not handed down to us by supreme beings, as the
radically devoted may imagine. These are the same people, I suspect, who journey
to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, which presents exhibits based on
a literal reading of The Book of Genesis mixed in with a healthy dollop of
Hanna-Barbara.

The Constitution was a compromise
document that roughly half of the Constitutional Congress, convened in 1787,
didn't even want to bring into existence. They already had the Articles of
Confederation and Perpetual Union in place, which had been more than
sufficient in the eyes of those state leaders who, over the brief existence of
the country, had carved out some wonderful kingdoms which they were prepared to
rule into perpetuity.

You never hear these modern day
devotees of the U.S. Constitution go on about the Articles of Confederation
as if they were sacred text, though back in 1787 when the Congress convened
they were under the impression that they were amending the Articles, not
drafting a new foundation document. After all, the Articles had created a
"Perpetual Union" with language that it could never be abrogated by any
subsequent writing. But it was.

In fact, the framers of the "new"
Constitution, primarily Virginians led by James Madison, were all about tossing
out a flawed framework that gave way too much power to men who represented only
a few (the Rhode Island leadership, for instance) and gave way too little power
to states with large populations (i.e., Virginia). The long, hot Philadelphia
summer of 1787 was a miserable exercise in the kind of politics that "democracy"
has become noted for, which equates to obfuscation of ideas, demagoguery,
purposeful delay, filibustering, threats of walkout and worse. The squabbling
was so great that occasionally the leadership would have "the ancient" 81-year
old Benjamin
Franklin carried in on a chair to listen to the debate and act as a mediating
influence, a wiser head. General George Washington, who was preordained to become the first
President of the United States based on his leadership in the Revolutionary War,
did not attend the day to day shouting matches, but showed up only on rare occasions
to act as the adult in the room. Thomas Jefferson took the entire fiasco in from
abroad, France to be specific. In the end, the document that the founders
produced, the Constitution of the United States of America, was hardly more than
a procedural manual that defined the branches of government, how elected
officials would come to exist, and how the basic machinery of it all would work.

What it did not do was offer any
specifics regarding the standard of our national character. The great statements
of purpose are all marketing fluff useful only inasmuch as it fosters the kind
of policy debates we still have going on today, 200-plus years later. The
details started to be added through the Amendments, which themselves are among
the most ambiguously worded codicils in the history of legalese (e.g., the much
quoted 2nd Amendment, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security
of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be
infringed." We are still trying to figure out what that historically awful
sentence must have been intended to mean, and in the vacuum of clear direction
we have granted to individuals the right to bear arms.) And, of course, the
Amendments themselves have sometimes been devised to overrule previous
amendments (the 18th and the 21st, regarding Prohibition).

The point is, the Constitution in
all of its fuzziness is simply the draw bridge that is retracted when those of
us who have assets to protect wish to insulate ourselves from the encroachments
of those who don't as well as those government officials who may wish to engage an
unwanted authority.

MORAL GUIDELINES:
What we don't really have in the U.S. is anything in the way of moral
guidelines. We have nothing that really defines our national character, because
discussing our differences as individuals has been too painful to ever yield
anything in the way of a shared national way of thinking. If you ask most Americans
what would best describe our "American character" it would not doubt be some
individual characteristic, like rugged individualism, self reliance, or fierce
independence. This is both beside the point and the point itself.

We may all be rough, rugged,
fearless freedom fighters, and whatever self-puffery feels good to us in the way
of self descriptions, but we are all still living together in a community in
which resources are shared and expenses and burdens are interrelated.

Maybe we need an old man, like
Benjamin Franklin, to be carried in on a chair to remind us all that we are
eventually going to have to grow up and make some serious commitments to the
continuance of our society, before the denials, the high-flown philosophical
positions, and the demagoguery render us so sick that the nation's health cannot
be sustained. - RAR